Saturday, September 16, 2017

I sent my Nexus 5X to LG technical support as it wasn’t connecting to cellular network.

LG asked $387 to “fix” it. At the same time the phone is sold for $260+tax at Walmart.

I rejected the fix, and LG returned my phone:

With the camera infrared sensor broken,

With the camera lens dirty with dust particles inside,

With a hit on the Fingerprint sensor.

I usually don’t write complains’ posts as I much prefer to handle the situation myself. Yet, this time I cannot help but to share my awful experience with LG official technical support and their customer service, as their behaviour has been truly unprofessional.

Here’s what happened.

Try one
My Nexus 5X wasn’t getting cellular signal. I called the LG Customer Service and they gave me a free shipping label to send the phone to their repair center.

After inspecting the phone they asked for a payment of $158 for the repair (budget below). Even though I could have bought a new phone for the price of $260+tax, I decided to go ahead and have it repaired.
When filling the credit card information in the form they sent me I made a mistake and I filled the card info wrong. Instead of calling me to to rectify the mistake LG shipped the unrepaired phone back to me.

One week later when I received the phone and opened the package, I found that the device had a hit in the fingerprint sensor, which wasn’t there before.

How much it costs to buy a new phone at the time of this incident

Try two
I called LG and explained what happened. They apologized for shipping it back right away without contacting me first, and told me that as the original mistake was made by my part I would have had to pay for shipping the phone back to them. I did as requested.

The LG technical support received the phone and two days later returned it to me. I received an email explaining that my repair request was rejected because the phone had run out of warranty. But this was not new, it was already clear that the phone was out of warranty the first time I sent it.

Try three
Once again I called LG again and explained what happened. The LG representative apologized for the misunderstanding and provided me with a free shipping label to send the phone back for the third time.

The technician of LG received the phone, and some days later LG sent me a budget for the repair, which is this one:

The cost of fixing it jumped from $158 to $387. This was much more expensive than buying a brand new phone (prices of buying a new Nexus 5X at the time of the budget repair can be find above). I called LG to ask why this huge bump in the price of fixing it. They said that the phone was tampered, it was opened by an unofficial technician and that it had inside fake components. Out of my best intention and honesty, this is not true. I explained it to the customer service representative but they wouldn’t believe me.

I rejected the repair request and LG proceeded to send me back the phone. When I got the package I found the phone like this:

The Infrared sensor is broken. When you open the camera app the phone can’t do focus.

The camera lens has some dust particles inside. When you open the camera app you see several marks like this:

Try four
I called LG and explain all of this from the beginning, putting emphasis on how the LG technician returned my phone more broken than how I actually send it:
Original problem: no cellular network.
Problems nowadays: no signal, camera useless, hit on the back.
I checked the phone carefully every time I received it, and the problems arose after the third time I sent it.

I definitely doubt that my phone was tampered or included fake components. All my life I used official technical support for each product’s brand to avoid headaches. Third party technicians are cheaper in the short run, but expensive in the long run. That’s why I never go to third third party technicians, ever.

The only possible explanation is that the fake/broken components were introduced by the LG technicians themselves.

Final response from the LG representative
They recommended me to take the phone to a small third party phone technical.
They said they will send a feedback request to the technician that handled my phone.
They said they won’t fix my phone or do anything about the broken state in which they returned it.

I will never buy a product from LG again. LG showed their word to be worthless mainly because of two points:

From one repair request to the other, they said the phone was a fake.

They broke and returned a phone, just like that. And they didn’t care.

Fabricio PH

About Me

Optimistic, analytical, proactive, flexible, results-oriented, with very good handling of interpersonal relationships, strong dedication to teamwork, as well as great interest in learning, teaching and the Social Good.

Willing to do an MBA in the upcoming years and gain experience in management.